Our Crooked Congress

CONGRESS is truly the enemy of the American people, and they don't even hide it anymore.

A truly crooked congressman wants to abolish food stamps thinking the poor are bums, yet he wants those farm subsidies to further enrich his coffers.

It is truly sickening:

Now, some enemies of food stamps don’t quote libertarian philosophy; they quote the Bible instead. Representative Stephen Fincher of Tennessee, for example, cited the New Testament: “The one who is unwilling to work shall not eat.” Sure enough, it turns out that Mr. Fincher has personally received millions in farm subsidies.

Given this awesome double standard — I don’t think the word “hypocrisy” does it justice — it seems almost anti-climactic to talk about facts and figures. But I guess we must.

So: Food stamp usage has indeed soared in recent years, with the percentage of the population receiving stamps rising from 8.7 in 2007 to 15.2 in the most recent data. There is, however, no mystery here. SNAP is supposed to help families in distress, and lately a lot of families have been in distress.

In fact, SNAP usage tends to track broad measures of unemployment, like U6, which includes the underemployed and workers who have temporarily given up active job search. And U6 more than doubled in the crisis, from about 8 percent before the Great Recession to 17 percent in early 2010. It’s true that broad unemployment has since declined slightly, while food stamp numbers have continued to rise — but there’s normally some lag in the relationship, and it’s probably also true that some families have been forced to take food stamps by sharp cuts in unemployment benefits.

Many, many people are getting food stamps and work but they don't make enough they can afford to pay for the food out of pocket.

Opponents are playing the class and race card while laughing at people's stupidity for falling for it.

Nothing But a Publicity Stunt

Since SNAP benefits are designed to be supplemental benefits hence the name, this effort by some congresspeople is just a publicity stunt. Of course nobody can live on SNAP benefits alone because you are expected to make up the difference.

Many people don't have the money to make the difference, and many people do not collect the full food stamp benefit each month. It's all based on income and expenses. If you have no rent or utilities to pay, you are not going to get the full benefit. If you have any income at all and can't pay rent and utilities, you can't get the full benefit. If you make more than $1211 a month, hardly enough to get out of poverty, you will get either $16 a month or you will get nothing.

Many if not most adults who qualify for SNAP work, but they don't make enough they can't rely on it.

Lee detailed the tough decisions she made grocery shopping — butter and milk were outside her budget and a McDonalds value menu item will count as her midweek break — in a blog post. “What I’m thinking about most during this trip is that I’m shopping only for myself,” she wrote, comparing the difficult decisions now to when she needed public assistance as a single mother. “When I was a young, single mother, I was on public assistance. It was a bridge over troubled water, and without it, I wouldn’t be where I am today. I spent hours debating what to buy and what to skip, all the while keeping my sons in my mind.” Many Americans receiving SNAP benefits are under 18 years old and live in working households.

It's better for people to demonize SNAP recipients as "bums."

Hunger in America

It might as well be that as some 47 MILLION people, including millions and millions who are employed, are having to resort to getting food stamps to supplement their food budget.

Remember, food stamps are not intended to be the total allotment for people but supplement it. Yours truly does not get the full benefit of $200 a month as a single person because of a pension and no real expenses for rent and utilities (can't afford to even get my own place).

In 2008, at the onset of the recession, 28.2 million people were enrolled in SNAP. While the official jobless rate, which peaked at 10 percent in 2009, had dipped slightly to 7.7 percent as of February this year, the SNAP program has continued to grow. The Congressional Budget Office (CBO) predicts that food stamp usage will drop only marginally, to 43.3 million people, by 2017. Even this estimate is predicated on the unemployment rate dropping to 5.6 percent over the next four years.

The number of people using food stamps roughly corresponds to the number of Americans living in poverty, which rose to just below 50 million people in 2011. Utilizing the Supplementary Poverty Measure (SPM), which factors in expenses for food, clothing, shelter, health care and other essentials, the US Census Bureau estimates that nearly one in six people in the US is living in poverty.

The average monthly benefit per person receiving SNAP benefits was only $133 last year. In order to qualify, a household’s income cannot be more than 130 percent of the poverty level, which is about $25,000 for a family of three, according to the Center on Budget and Policy Priorities (CBPP).

The assholes in Congress want to cut this necessary program even more while they don't do jack shit about restoring the economy.

That's because their ideology says a desperate population is a desirable population in order to destroy living standards to third world levels.

Our "Democratic" president also believes in this philosophy as well despite flowery language to the contrary.

Sociopathic Nation

Shaming elite sociopaths is verboten in this current political climate, but shaming the poor for political gain isn't.

Need I remind these assholes that the poor DO pay taxes, not just income taxes, and have a stake in this country. The vast majority of the poor have worked and most continue to work but cannot afford to feed themselves because these assholes at the top of the economic heap continue to reap "rewards" they do not deserve and are getting them at everybody else's expense.

A "safety net" like food stamps is just that--a safety net. I am glad it has been there for me when I have needed it. I went from around 50k before being illegally fired to 21k on UI to 300 a month in a pension and sleeping on my brother's couch until I can somehow miraculously get back on my feet economically. Food stamps, the ONLY "handout" I am eligible to get as I am not over 65 or do not have young kids and am not disabled, has saved me from eating out of dumpsters.

This is not a case of somebody being "out of touch." This is demagoguery designed to further divide what remains of the middle class against their supposed "inferiors" while the real parasites, people like this editor and Mitt Romney, continue to scam taxpayers.

Etc.

Here is some commentary about how "great" our economy is doing. Of course it is all by design.

Our "elected" officials are not working on our behalf but instead on behalf of their filthy rich contributors.

The Labor Department reported that the ratio of job-seekers to jobs available was 3.7 to 1, down somewhat from the 6 to 1 figure during the worst of the slump, but far worse during the present “recovery” than during previous recessions. During the 2001 recession, for example, the highest figure for the job seekers to jobs ratio was 2.9 to 1.

While these figures document the failure of American capitalism to provide work for vast sections of the working class, the political representatives of big business propose nothing to address the crisis. Neither President Obama nor his Republican challenger Mitt Romney have offered any policy for creating jobs, except the inevitable tax cuts for corporations and business.

The Republican-controlled House of Representatives and the Democratic-controlled Senate adjourned for their five-week-long August recess without any action on the social crisis. And the Federal Reserve Board, the US central bank, has limited its response to providing cheap credit for business to drive up stock prices and profits.

Sometimes I ask why we even have these politicians at all since they don't do anything.
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In this economy, there are many faces of food stamps.
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Forget about the former DNC chair ever coming out in support of public education and public ed teachers.

What a Record to Be Proud Of

Food stamp usage is on the rise, and one out of seven households now rely on the program for survival, such as it is.

States put all kinds of roadblocks for people to apply for the program and try to continue the stigma attached to having rely on it instead of eating out of dumpsters. This despite the fact the vast majority of recipients are or have been paying taxes which help fund the program.

Nationally, about two thirds of all eligible households receive food stamps, but there is great variation among the states. In Texas and California, for example, less than half of eligible households receive SNAP benefits. Even though the program is funded in full—except for administrative costs—by the federal government, California vindictively requires those seeking food assistance submit to fingerprinting and a 13-page application.

Only about one third of the nation’s 7 million food stamp-eligible senior citizens receive assistance. Many of the remainder may be unaware of the program or confused about how it works.
“A lot of people aren’t aware that they are eligible, particularly the elderly,” Barb Rupert of Commission on Economic Opportunity in Luzerne and Wyoming counties in Northeast Pennsylvania told the Hazleton Standard Speaker. In Luzerne County, an old coal-mining region, food stamp use is up 12.1 percent in two years.

Never underestimate the "shame" factor, either, which makes people feel guilty for even thinking about applying for it. After all, the GOP has tried and has succeeded in demonizing the poor for decades.

Another Sobering Statistic

which is representative of the times, and that's more working "families," to say nothing of individuals, are falling through the cracks into poverty:

Food stamp usage increased by 16 percent over the past year, according to CNNMoney.com, with one in seven Americans now depending on the federal program. Idaho saw the biggest increase in its food stamp program, with a spike of 39 percent compared to last year, followed by Nevada, at 29 percent, and New Jersey, at 27 percent. In the nation’s capital—Washington, DC—21.5 percent of the population currently receives food stamps, the highest rate in the country.

You better be completely destitute to get much of anything out of that program, though.  I get the queenly sum of $16 a month for food stamps because I am making such a huge, huge salary working in a shitty call center at a temporary job that will probably end this week or next.

Then I get to substitute and maybe clear $1,000 a month, not even one-third what I cleared as a teacher in Nevada.

News, Etc.

There are lots of problems with "value-added" teacher "evaluations."
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The elimination of foot-binding in China is a good example as to how to affect social change.
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Food stasmp usage is soraing among working families, thanks to laws which now base eligibility on income rather than on assets.
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Political Commentary

Six million people are on food stamps with no other income, while there appears to be no effort to by our government to create jobs for the millions of people who find themselves destitute.

Nevada is Once Again Number One

The distinction this time has to do with the rise in food stamps being the only "income" for people:

Nevada, the Times found, had the highest increase in households where food stamps were the sole source of income: a 173 percent rise from June 2007 to June 2009. That was good enough to be No. 1. Florida was No. 2 with a 113 percent increase.

Not Only are Record Numbers of People Jobless,

many of them have no other income than food stamps to keep them alive.

About six million Americans receiving food stamps report they have no other income, according to an analysis of state data collected by The New York Times. In declarations that states verify and the federal government audits, they described themselves as unemployed and receiving no cash aid — no welfare, no unemployment insurance, and no pensions, child support or disability pay.

Their numbers were rising before the recession as tougher welfare laws made it harder for poor people to get cash aid, but they have soared by about 50 percent over the past two years. About one in 50 Americans now lives in a household with a reported income that consists of nothing but a food-stamp card.

Yesterday I Linked an Article from the NYT

which was about the growing use of food stamps by vast numbers of people, and that the stigma of receiving the assistance has decreased.

The "welfare bum" who had food stamps to buy booze and junk food has pretty much fallen by the wayside. But the increase in food stamps points to a bigger problem:

The Times conducted a statistical analysis of food stamp use by county, in an effort to present a more detailed social portrait of the 36 million people currently on the food stamp rolls. “They include single mothers and married couples, the newly jobless and the chronically poor, longtime recipients of welfare checks and workers whose reduced hours or slender wages leave pantries bare,” the report noted.


Among the significant findings:

In 239 counties, more than a quarter of the population receives food stamps.
In more than 750 counties, at least one in three African-Americans receives food stamps.
In more than 800 counties, more than one-third of all children depend on food stamps.
In 62 counties, food stamp rolls have doubled over the past two years.
In 205 counties, food stamp rolls are up by two-thirds.

Once Upon a Time, There Was a Stigma Attached

to getting food stamps because, after all, people who got them were welfare "bums." However, thanks to massive unemployment and poverty, the stigma has long since passed.

It also helps many if not all states have converted food stamps to an ATM card.

The outreach worker is a telltale sign. Like many states, Ohio has campaigned hard to raise the share of eligible people collecting benefits, which are financed entirely by the federal government and brought the state about $2.2 billion last year.

By contrast, in the federal cash welfare program, states until recently bore the entire cost of caseload growth, and nationally the rolls have stayed virtually flat. Unemployment insurance, despite rapid growth, reaches about only half the jobless (and replaces about half their income), making food stamps the only aid many people can get — the safety net’s safety net.

Support for the food stamp program reached a nadir in the mid-1990s when critics, likening the benefit to cash welfare, won significant restrictions and sought even more. But after use plunged for several years, President Bill Clinton began promoting the program, in part as a way to help the working poor. President George W. Bush expanded that effort, a strategy Mr. Obama has embraced.

Because the Economy is Improving,

a record 35 million people are now on food stasmps.

You have to be destitute to qualify; that's how bad the economy really is.

In Some Good Economic News

one in nine Americans has to resort to using food stamps, that bane of rightwingers who think people who are unemployed and poor should simply starve.

The Booming Economy

About one in five Jackson and Josephine County (Oregon) residents receives food stamps.
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Wall Street celebrated the rise in jobless claims.
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More Poverty

This doesn't surprise me about the record number of people on food stamps.

One has to be destitute to qualify, trust me. Being merely unemployed doesn't cut it.

The Booming Economy

More and more middle class families now on the unemployment rolls are finding out they make too much money or have too many assets to qualify for food stamps, utility assistance, and other programs meant for the very poor.

That only stands to reason. If you have a halfway new car or other assets you can liquidate, at least in theory, you won't get aid.

Yours truly doesn't qualify for any aid since drawing the maximum unemployment benefits. You have to deal with it.

The Booming Economy

AT&T--12,000 jobs to be cut.


A record number of Americans are using food stamps thanks to our great economy.

The Booming Economy.

More Oregonians are needing state assistance in order to survive, thanks to rising prices.

I just got approved for food stamps yesterday. I am sure it isn't that much a month, but that will help tide me over until work comes along or I get reinstated.